Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1887-01-06
FACTORY BUTTER.
A Dairym~n View ON the Value Of Co
Operation to Every Farmer.


Operation to Every Farmer.
If every man and woman in the Uni
ted States who owns one cow or more,
had tho hest butter-making utensils
now known to man. had the critical
knowledge to enable them to use then,
to the very best advantage had the
best salt that ever was made from
brine, or dug from the mi,'es, the best
packages and room to make and store
it in, still it would be dreadful mis-
take in them all to imagine they could
thus produce the butter of commerce
so as to make sucG heterogeneous
lot take the place OF that which now
rules the great butter markets of the
world, commands the highest price and
makes the most profit fer the men who
milk the cows. The system, no matter
how we'll managed. would be defective
because it repUdiates the modern estab-
lished methods of getting fresh-made
butter into the hands of the high
priced-paying consumers. 1t leaves the
product so scattered. and the supply
SO inconstant. that it is not practical
way for the milk producers and con-
sumers to meet each other. A few
large dairymen who viii get. and reg
ularly supply TO customers, the entire
year, can do it. A few farmers
through the Intervention of one COM
mission man who has his customers
may do it with fair success. But for the
mass it is no more practical than for
the wheat farmer to reduce his wheat
to -four on the farm, and supply his
customers in distant cities.
The cooperative system that so
largely fills the best markets of the
world, has now such foothOld that
no amount of effort on the part Of scat
tered farmers can supercede it. 1t has
walked to the front, and can maintain
its advance over any scatteration pol
icy, no matter how much the small
farmer and his wife may know about
butter-making; and though what they
produce is as fruitless, when fresh
from the churn. as is the Darlington
butter that has been sold for many
years at dollar a pound. The excel
lence of it then has little to do with
getting price for j: in the shape the
small farmer gets it ready in small
amounts for market. He must pool
his milk, or his cream. with his neigh
bors to get good prices, just as certain
" as he must sell, with.them. his sur
plus wheat, and barley, and meat, and
the milk he produces for the cheese
factory.
If this would be true even though
every milk-producer was also first
class butter-maker. an excellent scholar
and business man, how much more is
it true when applied to the skill-or
rather the lack Of it-that we see ap-
piled to indiscriminate butter-maklng.
and to the development in business
ways and intelligence that character
ICES SO large poytion of the people
who milk the cows Their success is
illustrated by the quotations for butter
as they read-dairy butter about half
that Of creamery.
When we take this view, and know
how true it Is that the mass can not be
thus benefited. we question the wis
dom Of large part of the efforts that
are put forth to teach the farmers to
make and market their own butter.
1t is for them to learn to do what they
can not follow Is a business. 1t is for
them to put their fine, rosy product in
70 chute, that will return them dis
appointment and loss. The short road
to the cooperative butter-factory is the
ono the mass viii tread to make
money, no matter what they endure
IN getting there.-KaarFs D0irgnaa.